Create your own Metabolic Fingerprint
As a way of establishing a sort of profile or fingerprint of your metabolic efficiency and rate of decoupling, you can establish what power you are able to generate at the top of each zone. The reason we look to the top of each zone is that in at least two of the five zones, this represents the point right before you ‘cross over’ into an area of more costly power generation. In other words, you are likely to get the most ‘bang for your buck’ if you can keep the effort just short of the T1 and T2 crossovers. This means that the assessment process itself becomes valuable training as well as a gauge for where you are starting from, and how far you have come.
This fingerprint relies on power to gauge exactly where you are starting from, and after executing your training plan, what you’ve been able to achieve at each level of intensity (in each of the each zones). The form in Figure 18.2 can be found with our other forms in the Training Center once you are registered as a part of the process of purchasing this book. While this contains a single test example, we do provide a form for both the baseline testing as well as subsequent updates to see how you are improving your metabolic efficiency.